Legislative Committee Update 

The 2026 state legislative session got started on January 12th with a steady stream of bills affecting planning. Your APA WA Legislative Committee has been hard at work identifying bills of interest to the Chapter, doing analysis to understand the effects of planning-related bills, and advancing the chapter’s legislative priorities with the indispensable help of our chapter lobbyist, Mike Shaw. Mike helps us navigate the fast-paced, intricate systems used in Olympia to hear, debate, and adopt bills, and he enables the Chapter to act strategically to maximize its impact. Out of the several dozen the Chapter is tracking, here is a summary of bills the Committee has commented on so far:

In addition to our work reviewing and analyzing bills, Committee member Joe Tovar and I were invited to speak to the Senate Local Government Committee about opportunities to de-conflict recently passed land use-related bills. This opportunity provided a forum for us to showcase APA's technical expertise on how state legislation plays out on the ground and affects practitioners.

Are you legislation-curious? Sure you are! Come visit us at a Legislative Committee meeting on some Friday at noon, see what kinds of bills the state legislature drops, and help your fellow APA members analyze and debate how the chapter should respond. To get the Zoom link, email me at [email protected].